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Four hard drives on the same Qbide

Posted: Fri Apr 27, 2018 3:28 pm
by Giorgio Garabello
Many years ago I read somewhere that it was possible to connect 4 hard drives on the same Qbide, an Italian user has confirmed to me that "Nasta" demonstrated this to some meeting.
None of us remember the details, where can I find information about it?
Thanks in advance to everyone.

Giorgio

Re: Four hard drives on the same Qbide

Posted: Fri Apr 27, 2018 3:42 pm
by Dave
Yes this is possible. The drives do have to be master/slave pairs to the older ATA specs.

Nasta's new QubIDE design does include four IDE ports to support single devices under later ATA specs.

I'll post more when I have more details in front of me. I seem to recall it was a small PCB with one IC. It may not work on some of the clones if they are not literal copies of the original QubIDE - I don't know.

Nasta is very busy right now (as in, I'm not hearing from him for an unusually long time right now) so....

Re: Four hard drives on the same Qbide

Posted: Fri Apr 27, 2018 3:44 pm
by Giorgio Garabello
Dave wrote:Yes this is possible. The drives do have to be master/slave pairs to the older ATA specs.

Nasta's new QubIDE design does include four IDE ports to support single devices under later ATA specs.

I'll post more when I have more details in front of me. I seem to recall it was a small PCB with one IC. It may not work on some of the clones if they are not literal copies of the original QubIDE - I don't know.

Nasta is very busy right now (as in, I'm not hearing from him for an unusually long time right now) so....
I've an old Qbide... not "new" or "clone"

Re: Four hard drives on the same Qbide

Posted: Sun Apr 29, 2018 1:45 pm
by HAOUI
Giorgio,
I can confirm it is possible to use four drives on qubide even up to 32 drives.
This is exactly why I started the qubata driver for qubide but you need also a little add-on hardware using the expander connector (only old original qubide has this feaure).
I don't know if this kind of add-on really was made for the qubide and if they really worked (I can guess no).
Nasta had published a review on this feature but unfortunately I hadn't managed to get it working.
After a hard work I found that some lines can't be shared between drive couples otherwise drives become fully crazy.
I finally made some modified design and built 2 homework circuits that worked perfectly for me with qubata driver and I am using 2 systems with 4 drives each (1 or 2 cf card, zip unit, hard disk and cdrom) for years.
I always wanted to write some notes on this topic but never had time or saw interested users.
Anyway if you want playing iron man, I could supply some info permitting to build a working device.
Alain

Re: Four hard drives on the same Qbide

Posted: Sun Apr 29, 2018 7:09 pm
by Giorgio Garabello
HAOUI wrote:Giorgio,
I can confirm it is possible to use four drives on qubide even up to 32 drives.
This is exactly why I started the qubata driver for qubide but you need also a little add-on hardware using the expander connector (only old original qubide has this feaure).
I don't know if this kind of add-on really was made for the qubide and if they really worked (I can guess no).
Nasta had published a review on this feature but unfortunately I hadn't managed to get it working.
After a hard work I found that some lines can't be shared between drive couples otherwise drives become fully crazy.
I finally made some modified design and built 2 homework circuits that worked perfectly for me with qubata driver and I am using 2 systems with 4 drives each (1 or 2 cf card, zip unit, hard disk and cdrom) for years.
I always wanted to write some notes on this topic but never had time or saw interested users.
Anyway if you want playing iron man, I could supply some info permitting to build a working device.
Alain
many thanks Alain ..i'm very interested!!

Re: Four hard drives on the same Qbide

Posted: Mon Apr 30, 2018 8:00 am
by HAOUI
Well give me few days and I will be back. I have to retrieve some notes in my old stuff....

Re: Four hard drives on the same Qbide

Posted: Sun Mar 21, 2021 11:13 pm
by Zerover
I am also interested in making this expander, any news about this?

Re: Four hard drives on the same Qbide

Posted: Mon Mar 22, 2021 7:22 am
by klausfrank
I am very interested, too. I have read Nasta’s articles about the subject and have been looking for the hardware described in the articles, but I think it is not made, yet. ;)

Take care.

Re: Four hard drives on the same Qbide

Posted: Mon Mar 22, 2021 5:57 pm
by Dave
*laughs*

Nasta's expander has existed and several were sold.

Nasta redesigned the QubIDE a few years ago to offer some extended features. I incorporated it into the nextgen SQB but unfortunately never completed the project. This was in part due to it using a large number of GALs, but also due to my own lack of skills. Those have come along since then and I have been revising the design - replacing all the GALS with a single ATF1508.

Here's a notion of what's possible:
SQB v4 IO area
SQB v4 IO area

Re: Four hard drives on the same Qbide

Posted: Mon Mar 22, 2021 9:48 pm
by Pr0f
I used the following PAL logic to decode out 4 lanes of IDE - using a 20V8 PAL - I modified one of the aftermarket cards with 512K RAM option - removing the RAM and siting my piggyback GAL over the larger memory chip.